David Hamilton didn’t raise his stock in his junior year at the University of Texas. He never got the opportunity. On the heels of a sophomore season that saw him put up a .404 OBP and pilfer 31 bases, the speedy shortstop suffered a torn Achilles tendon in a scooter accident. The date was January 11, 2019, the motorized scooter was a Lime, and the upshot was Hamilton lasting until the 253nd pick of that summer’s draft.

The 5-foot-11, 175 pound San Marcos, Texas native could end up being be an eighth-round steal. Finally getting his feet wet in organized ball, Hamilton is off to a pedestrian start with the bat — a .250/.324/.359 slash line in 71 plate appearances — but the tools are real. Especially the wheels. Hitting near the top of the order for Milwaukee’s High-A affiliate, the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers, Hamilton has legged out a pair of triples and is 10-for-11 in stolen base attempts.

The 23-year-old middle infielder aspires to swipe 50 bags this year, and there’s a pretty good chance he’ll do just that. Augmenting his plus speed — Hamilton shared that he’s run a 6.4 sixty and a 4.4 forty — is an experimental rule designed to reward jackrabbits. Read the rest of this entry »

In past iterations of this column, a combination of pressing narratives and fatigue with certain pitchers and their respective teams, or a straight up lack of interesting matchups have forced us to get creative. Not so this week, where the first three days of the week each feature games with giant WATCH ME signs stapled to their probable pitchers. Beginning with the Padres-Brewers series, the final week of May has gifted us some undeniably fun fixtures.

Monday, May 24, 7:40 PM ET: Blake Snell vs. Brandon Woodruff

In his first year in San Diego, Blake Snell seems to be learning his new city using a method that many non-pitchers find helpful: a lot of walks. Snell has already issued 25 walks in 40.1 innings (13.7 BB%) and allowed hitters to reach base at a clip comfortably above the league average. The former Ray has a .330 on-base percentage against him, while the rest of the league is at .313. Read the rest of this entry »

Since before the start of the season, the Rays have telegraphed their willingness to move Willy Adames. It wasn’t so much in what they said — in that they didn’t say much of anything — but two factors made it a nearly foregone conclusion. First, the Rays are *loaded* at shortstop in the upper minors. Second, the Rays don’t compete by letting surplus talent rot on the vine. Adames will be eligible for arbitration after this year, so his presence on the major league roster blocked those cheaper minor leaguers.

It was just a matter of getting past the Super-Two deadline and some team meeting their asking price. On Friday, both of those factors lined up: the Rays have traded Adames and Trevor Richards to the Brewers in exchange for Drew Rasmussen and J.P. Feyereisen, as MLB.com’s Mark Feinsand first reported.
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“Houser (3-3) picked up the win on Saturday, allowing two runs on five hits over six innings in a 6-2 victory over the Marlins,“ RotoWire News reported. “He struck out ten without walking a batter.”

That’s a straightforward blurb. Nothing really stands out, so I understand if you forgot about it. Adrian Houser himself isn’t a very notable pitcher – his repertoire, which consists primarily of a sinker and an assorted mix of other pitches, doesn’t scream Pitching Ninja material. Against the Marlins a week ago, however, Houser entered uncharted territory in the realm of pitching. Not all outliers are worth mentioning, but this one is:

The graph is messy, but you can still see what happened. Ten strikeouts tied a career-high for Houser, which he reached on August 10, 2019. This time around, though, the journey there was markedly different. For the first time in his career, Houser threw his sinker over 70% of the time. He’d been high-strikeout in some games, high-sinker in others, but the two attributes had never converged so clearly until now. It’s not as if those sinkers were setting up a different pitch, either. Of the 10 strikeouts Houser collected, eight came from the sinker, while the remaining two came from the changeup and the curveball. For the most part, one pitch bookended each plate appearance.

This is remarkable if you know at least a smidgen of pitching. For one, the sinker isn’t a strikeout pitch! Its intended purpose is to induce grounders from hitters, not collect whiffs. Second, unless you’re a reliever, who throws a sinker or any one pitch that often? You’d imagine that hitters would catch on at some point. Yet Houser emerged relatively unscathed. The home run, double, and single that led to two earned runs weren’t even recorded off his sinker. Read the rest of this entry »

When we last checked in on our partially crowd-run Out Of The Park Baseball team, the season wasn’t yet underway. We spent the offseason building pitching depth after a nightmarish injury season left us with a bullpen made of duct tape and late-season callups. In an effort to avoid a recurrence of that problem, we came into this season with pitching depth that could best be described as excessive.

Even after trading Eric Lauer (more on that in a second), the team went seven deep on starters: Brandon Woodruff, Kevin Gausman, Collin McHugh, Freddy Peralta, Adrian Houser, Corbin Burnes, and Brent Suter are all at least candidates for a rotation spot. Surely, I (and you) reasoned, that depth will sustain us even if injuries become a problem again.

Good news: through 42 games, injuries haven’t been a problem. Our top five starters have made all 42 starts, though virtual Adrian Houser is headed for the bullpen unless he turns things around quickly; his 10.64 ERA isn’t reflective of his true talent, but his 9.25 FIP isn’t exactly a great sign. He’s become a two-pitch pitcher in this simulation, so a swap with Suter might suit both.
Read the rest of this entry »

Brandon Woodruff has quietly been one of the better pitchers in the National League since the start of the 2019 season. In 42 starts comprising 237 innings, the Milwaukee Brewers right-hander has 285 strikeouts to go with a 3.11 ERA and a 2.93 FIP. The last of those numbers is equal to Shane Bieber’s mark over the same period.

A big reason for Woodruff’s success is a repertoire adjustment he made midway through the 2018 season. As he explained in an article that ran here at FanGraphs last April, he began throwing both two- and four-seam fastballs. Neither is anything to write home about movement-wise, but paired together and sequenced well they’re a formidable combo. As Woodruff told me at the time, “It’s hard for the hitter to distinguish which one is going to be coming.”

Pitchers often “pitch backwards,” throwing breaking pitches in fastball counts, and vice versa. Thinking back to what Woodruff had told me, an idea crossed my mind: is it possible to pitch backwards with two different fastballs?

I asked the 28-year-old Tupelo, Mississippi native that question in a Zoom call. Read the rest of this entry »

Prospect writers Kevin Goldstein and Eric Longenhagen will sometimes have enough player notes to compile a scouting post. This is one of those dispatches, a collection of thoughts after another week of college baseball and the return of minor league play. Remember, prospect rankings can be found on The Board.

Kevin’s Notes

After nearly 600 days without them, it was sure nice to have minor league boxscores. It was also overwhelming in terms of thinking about who to highlight for today’s notebook. During a lunchtime call with Eric Longenhagen, we probably discussed 40 or 50 guys. To celebrate the long-awaited return of minor league baseball, I’ll push the draft aside for a week and talk about some prospects with real numbers next to their names for the first time in over a year. Instead of just finding five players, I decided to focus on a quintet of catchers who had big starts to the season. Catching prospects fascinate me as it’s the toughest position to find. There’s aren’t 30 legitimate starting catchers in baseball, but there are 30 teams, so while the bar is ridiculous on a defensive level, the necessary production in terms of offense is nowhere near that of other positions. Here are five real prospects — some big names, some sleepers — who have a shot at becoming that everyday guy.

Francisco Álvarez, C, New York Mets (Low-A St. Lucie)

Álvarez put up a .916 OPS in his 2019 stateside debut as a 17-year-old, and his 2021 is off to an impressive start. Eric ranked Álvarez as the best prospect in the Mets system this spring, and I support that ranking whole heartedly. Famous in the international community since his early teens, Álvarez commanded a $2.7 million bonus, and it’s easy to see why as there is the potential for the Venezuelan product to be an plus contributor both at the plate and behind it. He’s tightened up his meaty frame over the past year, which gives him good mobility in terms of block and receiving to go with a plus arm. With a bat in his hands, he has showcased an impressive approach for a teenager to go with real power that projects for 20-plus home runs annually when all is said and done. He’s not only the Mets’ best prospect, he’s on of the best catching prospects in all of baseball, a player who has the potential to be ready somewhere around the end of James McCann’s four-year deal. Read the rest of this entry »

Building off of yesterday’s American League conference call agendas, let’s move on to the National League and see what’s on the docket for the teams of the senior circuit.

Arizona Diamondbacks

• We’re over .500 and we’re banged up. This team is better than people on the outside thought. That said, I don’t think we’ll be exceptionally busy in terms of buying this summer. We’re not catching the Padres or Dodgers, and let’s not forget about the Giants. Let’s stick to the plan and just keep getting better long-term.
• The rotation has been up-and-down, and Corbin Martin is probably the only minor league piece with a chance to contribute in that area. Let’s get some ideas going as to how we get through 162 games with depth issues in that department.
• Let’s have some initial talks about draft strategy, as we’re picking sixth. It feels like there is a four-player tier at the top of the draft, so let’s see if there’s a tier-two player we like at six, or if we should be more creative and spread the wealth a bit.
• The offense overall has been good, but our infield is not hitting. There aren’t any immediate moves to make, but it sure would be nice to see Seth Beer get off to a nice start to gauge whether he can get some at-bats up here as a Christian Walker replacement.
• We love having the presence of Eduardo Escobar and Asdrúbal Cabrera, but there should be a market for both this July, and we should be listening. Let’s focus on arms in those discussions.
• The same goes for David Peralta, even though he’s been our second best hitter and is signed for next year as well. That extra year, which is a cheap one at that ($7.5 million), should help generate some interest.

Read the rest of this entry »

Wednesday night, the Marlins defeated the Brewers by a comfortable 6-2 margin. Though the game wasn’t close, it could have been slightly closer: the Marlins saved a run with a clutch sacrifice fly double play in the bottom of the sixth. That’s a standard play; every level from youth tee ball on up has catch-and-throw double plays. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t impressive. In fact, the moment-to-moment action of the play shows how impressive baseball players are even on plays we think of as de rigueur.

Here, watch it in real time:

Let’s start with the pitch: Sandy Alcantara couldn’t have done much better. He dotted the bottom of the zone with a 99 mph sinker, the perfect location to induce an inning-ending ground ball. Seriously, it’s hard to draw it up any better than this:

That’s a perfect location for a grounder-inducing pitch. When he’s located that pitch on the bottom edge of the zone, good things have happened: he’s saved roughly four runs relative to average per 100 sinkers he’s located there. That’s roughly in line with the best overall pitches in baseball. When he spots it, in other words, the Marlins are right where they want to be.

Travis Shaw begged to differ. Well-spotted pitch, plus velocity: he hit the smithereens out of it. The ball came off his bat at 101.7 mph, a veritable laser beam. Combined with its flat 12 degree launch angle, that ball is a hit the vast majority of the time; it carried a .910 expected batting average per Statcast, though that ignores the horizontal angle (or spray angle), and Shaw happened to hit it right at a defender. Read the rest of this entry »

Prospect writers Kevin Goldstein and Eric Longenhagen will sometimes have enough player notes to compile a scouting post. This is one of those dispatches, a collection of thoughts after another week of college baseball, minor league spring training, and big league action. Remember, prospect rankings can be found on The Board.

Kevin’s Notes

John Baker, RHP, Ball State: 9 IP, 4 H, 1 R, 1 BB, 8K

When I saw John Baker’s line from Friday’s game against North Illinois, my first reaction was, “Wait a second, that John Baker?” It feels like he’s been part of the Redbirds’ weekend rotation since the Clinton administration, but in reality he’s a fifth-year senior with 60 games and over 300 innings on his college resume. He’s always been good, earning All-Conference awards and a couple of pre-season All-American mentions while compiling a 3.17 career ERA and more than 10 strikeouts per nine innings. In 2019, he was a 29th round pick of the Marlins; he was overshadowed on that year’s Ball State team by eventual Arizona first-round pick Drey Jameson, who was taken 34th overall. Read the rest of this entry »